


red of tooth and claw

by Nokomis



Category: Penny Dreadful (TV)
Genre: Fix-It, Gen, Post Season 2
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-17
Updated: 2016-12-17
Packaged: 2018-09-09 03:19:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,049
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8873719
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nokomis/pseuds/Nokomis
Summary: One thing becomes another, or, the untimely death and revival of Sembene.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Koe](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Koe/gifts).



One thing consumes another. One thing becomes another.

Ethan should be reassured by the sentiment. Sembene’s slow, steady voice sometimes echoed through his mind, utterly calm even in the face of all that Ethan was. But the dim memory of the way soft warm flesh tore beneath his teeth (fangs) gave the words new meaning: Ethan had consumed so many lives. Was he damned to be consumed by them in return?

It wasn’t something he was willing to ask aloud, not even in his darkest moments, not even in his most honest ones with Vanessa, when he found himself confessing his sins and keeping his horrors held tight within. 

One thing consumes another.

Sembene’s flesh had torn as easily beneath his fangs as that of a child, of a woman, of a grizzled drunkard. Ethan’s darker side had never been choosy, had never needed a cause to destroy. His body lay in the basement, the place where all the darkest secrets were kept, draped with a pale sheet flecked with copper stains. Ethan had spent hours staring at it, feeling strangely tempted to lift the corner, to see his own handiwork, to have to gaze upon the concrete horror of his actions.

He’d been staring at the body for so long that he fancied that it was moving. Ethan rubbed his eyes. He was exhausted, physically and emotionally, with that strange weakness that he felt after the moon had done its damage to his body. He took one last look at Sembene -- he supposed Sir Malcolm would make arrangements in the morning -- and went upstairs. Sleep would hopefully take him. If not, he would rest his weary body until the remainder of the household rose. 

Ethan’s room at the top of the stairs was neat as a pin. He’d made up the bed before he’d left, back when he’d been less heartsore.

Sembene hadn’t wanted to go at night, no more than Ethan had. They’d both known it was a terrible choice, that the moon’s light would complicate things. Why it would complicate things.

But Ethan can’t find it within himself to be angry at Vanessa or Sir Malcolm. Their actions made sense given the information that they had at hand. 

He climbed into bed, and made an attempt at sleep. Tomorrow would bring fresh horrors, and time aplenty to dwell on what had gone awry.

*

Ethan woke suddenly, sitting up in his bed, startled and wary. His room was dark; the lamp he’d left dimmed had gone out. This room was familiar to him, as close to home as he’d ever had, but the darkness made the edges of the room seem soft and indistinct, as though they could stretch on forever and hold nightmares untold.

Ethan sucked in a breath, the air crisp and sharp. Something… Something was there, standing in the shadows. Something familiar and impossible.

Even as he stared, the shape moved closer. 

“It can’t be,” Ethan said, and the guilt in his belly churned into something even more regretful. “It can’t.”

“It seems it is,” said Sembene, voice slow as ever, but somewhat more haggard than it had been prior to his maiming. “Ethan.”

“Sembene, my friend,” Ethan replied, feeling the antagonistic urges to hug the man and flee from him. He settled for inaction. 

“I thought my fight was over,” Sembene said. He stepped close enough that Ethan could make out his features; the jagged marks scoring his face were still present, but no longer deadly-looking. 

Ethan knew what it meant. He knew. “I’m afraid it’s only starting.”

The worst part was that he knew the horrors his friend would now experience, and yet--

Ethan found himself grateful.

*

Waking Sir Malcolm seemed like a useless endeavor. He’d known Sembene longest, but Ethan didn’t need his expertise or his condemnation. Vanessa was the one who would understand, and Vanessa was the one who might know what ought to be done.

Opening her bedroom door in the dead of night felt less like an invasion than Ethan would have supposed; they’d grown close enough that such intrusions were easily forgiven. 

She had somehow found sleep, though restlessly. Her breathing was uneven and would catch in her throat, as though she were still fighting even as she slumbered, and Ethan felt no guilt in rescuing her from her plight. “Miss Ives?”

She tossed, and Ethan reached out and rested his fingertips on her shoulder, bared and pale in the faint light, as he repeated her name.

Vanessa woke silently, body freezing and muscles bunching, like a snake coiling before the strike.

Then she relaxed as she said, “Mr. Chandler. You startled me.”

“Miss Ives,” Ethan repeated. “I’ve something to show you. Would you meet me in the hall?”

“Of course,” she said. “Just give me a moment.”

Ethan waited in the hall, mentally rehearsing what to say. Sembene was still in Ethan’s room, sitting on the trunk at the end of the bed. He’d been staring at his hands when Ethan had left him minutes before. The light had revealed the extent of Sembene’s injuries, and, more troublingly, how much he had recovered.

He supposed that the best route would be to simply show Miss Ives what had transpired.

She emerged from her room, hair unkempt but newly ensconced in a robe, looking lovely and severe. 

“You recall,” Ethan said, as he rested his hand on his own bedroom door, “what I’ve said of my nature.”

“Obscure but threatening, yes,” Vanessa said. She now seemed as though she’d been awake for hours, and Ethan envied her composure.

Ethan simply opened the door in response, and Vanessa lost that composure as she realized who sat within.

“Miss Ives,” Sembene said. He still sat, hands braced on his own knees. “I apologize if you worried on my account.”

“My dear Sembene,” Vanessa said, her own hands moving from her mouth to her heart and back to her mouth again, shock writ on every feature, “you are worth every worry. But I fear I am confused. You were rather dead earlier this evening.”

Sembene’s eyes cut to Ethan, and Ethan said, “He’s recovered quite nicely.”

“One thing becomes another,” Sembene said, and Ethan sighed and settled down next to him, stretching his legs out and crossing them at the ankle. 

“You’re aware that I was… responsible,” Ethan said. Confessing his sins had never come easily for him, even to those as close to him as these.. 

Vanessa was an impossible creature, and thus inclined to believe impossible things. She grasped the truth of the situation quickly. “You are transformed,” she told Sembene.

“I am changed,” he agreed. “I have not yet transformed.”

Ethan stared at the ceiling. “It’s not so easy as all that.”

“Yet here he sits,” Vanessa said, in that sly way of hers. Ethan didn’t have to look at her to know the half-smile she wore. 

“Mr. Chandler,” Sembene said, “It is in the past.”

Ethan looked back and forth between them. Sembene’s face was unreadable, and Vanessa’s was understanding. 

“What do we do?” he asked. 

Vanessa focused in on Sembene, and her smile let Ethan know he’d done the right thing in waking her. “Live,” she said. “Live, and fight our battles as best we can.”

*

“Remarkable,” said Victor, peering at Sembene closely. “Would you mind if I listened to your heart?”

“It is beating,” Sembene said, unimpressed with Victor’s amazement. 

“It is,” Victor said, sounding entirely too fascinated with the idea. “And your wounds were grievous, fatally so, and yet, they’re almost gone.” He leaned in again, as if to try to peer inside Sembene’s shirt, but realized himself in time. 

“He is well?” Sir Malcolm said. He’d greeted Sembene as though nothing had been amiss when he’d come downstairs for breakfast, but realization had soon dawned. Ethan had been surprised by the joy with which Sir Malcolm had embraced Sembene.

“Startlingly so,” Victor confirmed. There was a strange giddy feeling emanating from everyone in the room with the exception of Ethan and Sembene himself. 

Sembene had always been reserved, but Ethan knew the source of his own plight. The full moon would not return for weeks, but Ethan could feel a growing itch beneath the skin. It was a feeling he hadn’t experienced since New Mexico Territory, and he wondered if it was less the moon and more the proximity to another of his own kind.

His kind. Ethan took a deep breath, and felt the reality of what he’d done settle heavily upon his shoulders. He and Sembene were tied together now. He didn’t know what the difference was between Sembene and the Pinkerton man he’d maimed, but he’d bestowed a terrible, blood-soaked gift upon a man who he considered a friend.

Vanessa caught his eye, seemingly the only one now to notice that Ethan had not joined in on the joy. 

Rather than let him suffer silently, she chose another route. “Mr. Chandler,” she said, voice clear and strong, catching the attention of everyone in the room. “Would you kindly share with our dear friends the circumstances of Sembene’s miraculous resurrection?”

“No,” Ethan said immediately. 

“I think it would be a good idea,” Sembene said. Sir Malcolm cast him an unreadable look, and Ethan wondered just what Inspector Rusk had suggested to him.

Victor seemed to be the only one entirely shocked that Ethan was involved. “Mr. Chandler is aware?”

“Responsible, more like,” Ethan said, because he knew a losing draw when he saw one. “I killed him.”

“You did a piss-poor job of it, looks like,” Sir Malcolm said. Ethan was entirely certain that Inspector Rusk had brought up the Mariner’s Inn. 

“I’m failing to understand how you could have done that,” Victor said, gesturing vaguely to the fading scars on Sembene. “They were clearly done by an animal.”

“By tooth and claw,” Ethan agreed.

Victor blinked at him, and Ethan could feel the weight of Sir Malcolm’s gaze, dark as a New Mexico night.

“A few months ago,” Sembene said, “Mr. Chandler came to me, and asked me to chain him in the basement and to simply stand watch.”

Even Vanessa seemed surprised by this revelation. “And what did you see?”

“I saw a good man become something else, something wild and hungry,” Sembene said. “And as night succumbed to daylight, I watched that good man emerge again.”

Ethan watched Sembene closely. “Do you fear it? The thought of becoming that wild and hungry thing yourself?”

“Yes,” Sembene said, “but fear doesn’t stop a thing from coming.”

“You transform,” Victor said, now staring at Ethan with the same clinical fascination that he’d given Sembene moments before. “You are remarkably healthy. Is that why you never seemed to fear L--- Brona’s consumption? Are you even human?”

“What is it, to be human?” Vanessa interrupted before Ethan was forced to contemplate matters rather beyond him at present moment. “Dr. Frankenstein, I daresay we all rather push the definition of humanity at times.”

Victor seemed rather more startled by Vanessa’s stance than Ethan thought he would. Sir Malcolm took a more practical approach and simply asked, “What does this mean for Sembene?”

Ethan shrugged helplessly. “I’ve never… I haven’t known of another.”

It wasn’t truly a lie, no matter what suspicions he secretly held about moonlit nights on the desert. 

“Now, you are no longer alone,” Sembene said. He caught Ethan’s eye, and Ethan was grateful for the steady acceptance that he felt. He wasn’t, no matter how red his hands were stained. He looked around the room, at the four people who knew of at least some of his crimes, and none looked at him with anything resembling hatred.

“I wish it was different,” Ethan said, unable to find the words to explain, words he knew would come easily to Vanessa, but Sembene had no real need for flowery turns of phrase.

He clasped Ethan’s hand instead, a gesture that felt strangely formal for its intimacy. “I am glad to be alive, no matter the price.”

Ethan looked at the scarification on Sembene’s face, and thought that he just might understand what such a statement truly meant. He already bore the weight of broken lives upon his shoulders. 

Ethan could stand to bear the weight of a life transformed on his.


End file.
